“I come before this council as the emissary of my master, Lord Kryptman. The
missive I have to impart comes directly from him, and he has sanctioned me to
act in his name, in all things.”
Korvane could not help but feel that the last statement was aimed directly at
Inquisitor Grand. The air grew colder still. All of the councillors knew that
Inquisitor Grand was the source of the drop in temperature, and several cast
wary glances around the table, yet none dared show any overt sign of discomfort
or fear.
Interrogator Rayne reached to a pouch at her waist and withdrew a small,
circular device with a glassy orb on its upper surface. Activating a command
stud, she slid the device across the surface to the centre of the table, and
stood back with her arms folded.
The orb flickered to life and then cast a column of harsh white light into
the space above it. The shaft danced with motes of energy, which resolved into a
figure. It was a stooped, old man, clothed in the robes of an inquisitor, and he
was possessed of such power and authority that all in the chamber felt utterly
cowed.
Then, the glowing, transparent figure spoke, his rich, low voice filling the
chamber.
“I am Inquisitor Lord Kryptman,”
the projection began.
“And I come
before you with the full authority of the High Lords of Terra themselves. There
is scant time for explanations and none for debate, so I will get straight to
the point.
“All commands receiving this message are hereby ordered, by the authority
of the Senatorum Imperialis, to cease all military operations and set course for
the Macragge system in the Realm of Ultramar. Every possible asset is to be
mustered and no resource expended except in the execution of this order.”
The flickering projection of Inquisitor Lord Kryptman paused, as if gathering
his thoughts.
“Fellow subjects of the God-Emperor, I shall not lie to you. A threat the
likes of which the Imperium has not faced since the dawn of this age is
descending upon us. I do not know if this is the beginning or the end, but I
tell you this. If we do not defeat it at Macragge, the entire Imperium may fall.
“Heed the words of my envoy as my own, and obey what orders you are given
as my own.
“That is all.”
Profound silence descended on the council chamber, only the faint whirring of
the servo-skulls’ spy-lenses audible as they hovered in the shadows. The
projection faded to nothing, and Interrogator Rayne stepped forwards, placing
her hands at the table’s edge and leaning in hawkishly to address the
councillors.
“The Damocles Gulf Crusade,” Rayne began haughtily, “though a righteous and
noble undertaking, is ended.”
A thin skein of ice appeared on the surface of the marble table, spreading
outwards from Grand’s gnarled hands where they gripped its edge. A sense of
primal dread settled on the chamber, and Korvane knew that dread was the
inquisitor’s ire, made manifest by the agency of his formidable psychic
potential. Rayne’s glance settled on Inquisitor Grand for a moment, before she
continued without comment.
“All available forces are to answer my master’s call and muster at Macragge.”
“What threat?” Cardinal Gurney stammered. “What could possibly—”
The interrogator went from haughty calm to banshee rage in a heartbeat. “You
will be silent!” Rayne screamed, her rage so focussed and sharp it was as if she
had drawn a power sword and plunged it directly into the cardinal’s heart. “By
the authority vested in me by my master, I
order
you to be silent.”
Cardinal Gurney looked like he had been bodily assaulted, his face draining
of its colour as he visibly shrivelled before the interrogator’s anger. Korvane
knew that the cardinal, as an officer of the Ministorum, could claim to be
outside of Kryptman’s authority. But then again, the lords of the Inquisition
relied not on rulebooks to impose their will, but on influence, and Gurney was
well outranked in that regard. Korvane glanced towards Inquisitor Grand, who had
remained silent throughout. Grand was rigid, but now a frosting of ice coated
his flesh.
Several of the councillors swallowed hard, as much through fear of the
inquisitor as dread at the envoy’s words. What could possibly threaten such a
vast expanse of the mighty Imperium of Mankind? Even the most widespread
rebellion, the mightiest ork incursion or the most ferocious crusade of the
arch-enemy rarely afflicted more than a sector of Imperial space. To threaten an
entire segmentum, an enemy would have to be of a scale not witnessed since the
Imperium’s darkest days.
“The enemy of which my master speaks is a previously unknown xenos-form,
which he has codified
tyranids,”
Rayne continued, satisfied that Gurney’s
interruption was at an end. “Already, they are classed
xenos terminus
,
but serious consideration is being given to creating a new threat rating, just
for them.”
“What are these… tyranids?” said Korvane. “What is their nature?”
Rayne turned her head to look down at Korvane, before replying, “They are
beasts of nightmare.” Her gaze became distant as she spoke, as if recalling
sights she would rather not describe. “They take a million forms, from
gargantuan, world-razing monstrosity to flesh-eating parasite. They are teeth,
claw, tentacle and maw.” The interrogator stopped there, and Korvane had little
desire to learn more, though he knew he would.
“How were they discovered?” Korvane pressed.
“Initially, when outlying worlds surveyed long ago by the Exploratus, fell
silent.”
Korvane nodded, reminded of the misfortunes that had overtaken the Clan
Arcadius in recent years, as ancient hereditary trade routes to the galactic
east had run dry, seemingly without cause. Worlds that generations of his
dynasty had traded with had gone silent, the once ceaseless flow of exotic goods
slowing to a mere trickle. The clan’s fortunes had suffered so badly that Lucian
had pinned all of his hopes on the Damocles Gulf Crusade, aiming to establish
exclusive trade deals with the tau once they had been put firmly in their place.
Grand’s Exterminatus had threatened all of that, but Rayne’s news spoke of
something far worse than a threat to a single world.
“Having perceived a pattern in reports of worlds once catalogued as
sustaining life being reduced to barren rocks, my Lord Kryptman received
dispensation to investigate. At the Explorator base at Tyran Primus, he found
evidence of a xenos abomination so virile and ravenous its organisms can strip
an entire world of its biomass in days.”
“To…” Logistician-General Stempf stammered, “…to what end?”
“That is under investigation,” Rayne answered. “Certainly to feed, presumably
to reproduce, but we do not yet understand why they need so much biomass or to
what use they put it. But they descended on Thandros like a swarm of voracious
locusts, like a beast rising from the depths of the ocean. Then it was
Prandium.”
“And after Prandium,” said Jellaqua, “comes Macragge, fortress home world of
the Ultramarines.”
“Surely,” said Tacticae-Primaris Kilindini, speaking for the first time at
council, “an entire Chapter of Space Marines can hold this species at bay. To
assault Macragge is suicide on a racial scale…”
Interrogator Rayne studied the Tacticae for a moment, as if he were a curious
morsel on a sample dish laid out before her. “No,” she said flatly. “Let me make
this quite clear.”
“The tyranids are more than a species. They are a blight, a swarm. They are a
storm of teeth and claws and chitin and saliva, and they hunger to consume us
all. They are a billion billion ravening organisms bred for one purpose and one
purpose alone: to kill. Each organism is but a single cell in a mass that is
spread across light years of space. Where that mass travels, its thoughts drown
out the light of the Astronomican and cast the warp itself into impassable
turbulence. Astropaths caught in that ‘shadow in the warp’ would rather scratch
their brains out than endure the chittering of a trillion voices that all speak
as one.”
“So no, Tacticae-Primaris. The Ultramarines alone cannot hold this foe at
bay. It will take every Chapter, regiment, Legio and fleet on the Eastern Fringe
to afford even the slightest chance of survival, yet alone victory.”
There was a drawn-out pause, before Korvane spoke up. “How long.”
“In truth,” sighed Rayne, “we have no way of knowing. Every unit of every arm
we can reach is being recalled to Macragge, whatever their status. We may have
months, or just days, but should Macragge fall, nowhere will be safe.”
“I have already briefed Interrogator Rayne as to our ground forces’ status,”
said General Gauge. “Most of our units are at or closing in on the Gel’bryn star
port. The evacuation is already under way.”
Now the temperature in the council chamber was dropping towards sub zero, and
Rayne turned her gaze on Inquisitor Grand.
“You have a statement to make, inquisitor?” Rayne said haughtily. “An
objection, perhaps?”
Grand’s hold on the side of the marble tightened, his knuckles turning white.
Frost crept up the glass drinking vessel in front of Korvane, and he knew that
should he touch it his skin would adhere to its surface. Though little of
Grand’s face was visible beneath his hood, his scarred mouth scowled as he
answered.
“The Writ of Exterminatus has been cast upon this place called in the base
tongue of the xenos
Dal’yth Prime
,” the inquisitor growled, his disgust
at using the tau’s name for their world plain to read. “I have pronounced my
sentence upon the xenos of the world below, and that sentence shall be enacted.”
Interrogator Rayne tipped her regal head back and looked down her nose at the
inquisitor. For one of her rank to display such open contempt for a superior
would ordinarily have provoked the most lethal form of censure. But Rayne was
speaking with the authority of an inquisitor lord, and all present in the
chamber knew it.
Inquisitor Grand knew it.
“The Writ of Exterminatus is hereby revoked,” said Rayne, her eyes boring
into the shadows within Grand’s hood. “By authority of my Lord Inquisitor
Kryptman.”
A sharp groaning echoed through the chamber, the sound of metal and wood
distorted by the cold.
Something dropped suddenly from the shadows above the conference table,
smashing to a thousand shards and causing all except Grand and Rayne to pull
back sharply and several to utter curses and exclamations. Korvane’s heart
thundered as he saw that the icy table surface was now covered in bony
splinters. One of the servo skulls had frozen solid and plummeted from the air,
shattering on impact with the cold, hard marble.
“To leave an enemy at our backs is—” Grand began.
“Entirely the point,” interjected Rayne, her tone low and as cold as the air
in the chamber.
“It is decided,” said General Gauge. “On Kryptman’s authority.” At a nod from
the interrogator, Gauge went on. “If these tyranids are the threat they appear,
then the tau are more use to us alive than exterminated.”
“Blasphemy!” Cardinal Gurney spat. Rayne shot him another dark glance, and he
looked to the inquisitor at his side, but said no more.
“I think I see it,” Korvane spoke up. “If the incursion is dire enough to
imperil the entire segmentum, then the tau will likely have to face it too. It
is not unheard of for humanity to stand side by side with xenos against a mutual
foe. Have our forces not taken to the field alongside the eldar, against the
arch-enemy?”
“Indeed,” said Rayne. “And if the tau will not cooperate in this, they will
face the tyranid swarm alone. Either way,” she reiterated Gauge’s words, “they
are more use to us alive.”
“As a backstop,” said the Tacticae-Primaris, nodding. “Better the invaders
expend their energies against the tau’s worlds than against our own.”
Interrogator Rayne looked around the table to each of the councillors,
allowing her words to sink in. She ended her sweep on Inquisitor Grand, her gaze
lingering on him along with that of every other councillor present.
Slowly, the inquisitor rose to his feet. He turned without a word, and
stalked from the council chamber, frost billowing in the air behind him.
Leaning back in the seat in the passenger bay of his Rhino, Sergeant Sarik
exhaled slowly. The pict-feed showed the council breaking up. The councillors
each had a myriad of tasks to undertake, for the crusade fleet would be
disengaging as soon as practicable. Sarik and the rogue trader had watched the
proceedings in grim silence, barely able to conceive of the scale of the xenos
incursion the interrogator had described. With a flick of a control rune Sarik
deactivated the command terminal, the pict screen fading to grainy static.
“Well?” said Lucian.
“Any misgivings I had about evacuating are now entirely assuaged, friend
Lucian,” Sarik replied. “The storm rises, and soon worlds shall burn, of that I
am sure. Honour demands the Astartes answer the call to war.”
“And Dal’yth Prime?” pressed Lucian.
“Honour is satisfied,” said Sarik. “You are troubled?”
Lucian paused before answering, then nodded. “Sarik, you are a mighty
warrior, and a noble man…”
“But?” said Sarik, a hint of amusement glinting in his eye.
Lucian smiled, though his own eyes showed no amusement at all. “But, your
battles are fought in the open, against foes you can see and understand and
kill.”
“And yours are not,” said Sarik.
“Aye,” Lucian sighed. “They are not.”
“How then must you win your own battle?” Sarik said. “Tell me this, and I
offer you what aid I may provide.”
“This is not over,” said Lucian flatly.
“Explain, please,” said Sarik, judging that Lucian referred to something more
than the crusade and its battles against the tau.